Laying it down, part 1

I've been thinking a lot about bunting recently.  Considering all of the information we have about offensive statistics, it's surprising to me that we don't have more data on bunting readily available - Fangraphs has data for bunt hits and sacrifice bunts, but it's much more difficult to find information for bunts that aren't hit into play.  Certainly, one of the most important aspects of being a good bunter is being able to consistently get the ball in play, so I believe that it's just as important to look at foul and missed bunts as it is to look at fair bunts.  Combining the Fangraphs bunting splits leaderboard with PITCHf/x data can give us a more detailed look at who the league's better and worse bunters are.

There are three main things that I was able to quantify with the data I was working with - the frequency with which a batter attempts to lay down a bunt, the frequency of bunts put into play, and the overall quality of the bunt.  Before I get more in depth on the metrics I've been working with, I think it would be best to show some generic bunting benchmarks for the 2010 season.

	Attempt%	Fair%	Foul%	Missed%
League Average	.019	.505	.416	.080

	Hit%	Out%	Sac%	Double Play%
League Average	.188	.286	.517	.009

For the first table: attempt% is the number of bunt attempts (fair bunts, foul bunts, missed bunts) divided by the total number of swings; fair% is the number of fair bunts divided by bunt attempts; foul% is the number of foul bunts divided by bunt attempts; missed% is the number of missed bunts divided by bunt attempts.  For the second table: hit% is the number of bunt hits divided by fair bunts; out% is the number of bunt outs (in which a sacrifice is not involved) divided by fair bunts; sac% is the number of sacrifice bunts divided by fair bunts; double play% is the number of bunt double plays (there are very few of these) divided by fair bunts.  As you can see by the attempt percentage, it's not that common that a hitter decides to try to lay down a bunt - on average, only three or four pitches in a game result in a bunt attempt.  For the 2010 season, which is the data set that I'll be working with for this post, I have a total of 5,921 bunt attempts.



Who attempts to bunt the most?


The first metric I'd like to dig deeper into is attempt percentage.  The distribution below shows the attempt percentages for 573 hitters who took at least 75 swings last year.  

Of the qualified hitters, there were 138 without a single bunt attempt, and a few more with an attempt percentage between 0% and 1%.  Approximately 90% of the qualified players had rates under 10%, and the vast majority of the players over the number were pitchers, with Tim Lincecum (.252), Aaron Cook (.247), Livan Hernandez (.234), Zach Duke (.223), and Dave Bush (.218) leading the charge.  Raising the minimum number of swings to 200 (and thus eliminating pitchers) gives us these leaders:

Rank	Name	Team	Attempt%
1	Carlos Gomez	Brewers	.107
2	Julio Borbon	Rangers	.105
3	Peter Bourjos	Angels	.102
4	Juan Pierre	White Sox	.098
5	Erick Aybar	Angels	.096
6	Nyjer Morgan	Nationals	.095
7	Emilio Bonifacio	Marlins	.093
8	Luis Castillo	Mets	.083
9	Gregor Blanco	Braves/Royals	.081
10	Everth Cabrera	Padres	.078

  

On a counting level, Juan Pierre was the clear champion of bunt attempts with 111; he was the only player with more than 100.  Next closest were Nyjer Morgan and Erick Aybar with 95 and 94, respectively.

One more thing on attempt percentages.  Common baseball sense would tell us that the guys who are less offensively adept would be the players resorting to bunting most often.  Based on these data, that would appear to be the case.  Keeping the 200 swing minimum, here is attempt percentage plotted against linear weight runs per 100 pitches (the numbers aren't exact, so don't consider 0 to be the exact 2010 league average).

For the most part, the frequent bunters are to the "below-average" side of the chart.  If you were wondering, the outlier with a bunt percentage of just over 6% and and an 0.69 runs per 100 is the Tigers' Will Rhymes.

Who gets it in fair territory?

As I showed in the benchmarks, the league average rate for fair bunts was just over 50%.  For the purpose of looking at season leaders and trailers, I've set a minimum of 20 bunt attempts, which leaves 70 bunters from last year.  The tables below show the fair bunt rates for the 10 leaders and trailers.

Rank	Name	Team	Attempts	Fair%
1	Scott Podsednik	Royals/Dodgers	33	.818
2	Ramon Santiago	Tigers	27	.778
3	Will Rhymes	Tigers	20	.750
4	Daric Barton	Athletics	20	.750
5	Clayton Kershaw	Dodgers	27	.741
6	Ryan Dempster	Cubs	26	.731
7	Barry Zito	Giants	22	.727
8	Alexi Casilla	Twins	20	.700
9	Tony Gwynn	Padres	30	.700
10	Elvis Andrus	Rangers	56	.679
1x	Roy Halladay	Phillies	22	.136
2x	B.J. Upton	Rays	23	.174
3x	Rajai Davis	Athletics	36	.222
4x	Alcides Escobar	Brewers	37	.270
5x	Chris Coghlan	Marlins	29	.276
6x	Mike Leake	Reds	22	.318
7x	Jon Garland	Padres	22	.364
8x	Anibal Sanchez	Marlins	22	.364
9x	Nick Punto	Twins	27	.370
10x	Orlando Hudson	Twins	27	.370

Since this metric only judges whether the bunt was in play or not, its best use is probably to determine which players would be good in sacrifice situations.  There are plenty of pitchers sprinkled throughout the list (including three in the top 10 and four in the bottom 10), and the pitcher's role is almost exclusively to sacrifice.



Who does the most damage?


But what about what happens once the ball is in play?  There are a number of possible ways to quantify this; Fangraphs has bunt average, which is a good way to show how productive non-sacrifice bunts were.  In this post, I will use hits over all fair bunts as opposed to non-sacrifices (detailed in the glossary).  Below are the 10 leaders for hit%, out%, and sac%, with 10 fair bunts as the minimum. 

Rank	Name	Team	Fair Bunts	Hit%
1	Adam Jones	Orioles	12	.583
2	Gregor Blanco	Braves/Royals	21	.571
3	Cameron Maybin	Marlins	11	.545
4	Jose Reyes	Mets	17	.529
5	Ichiro Suzuki	Mariners	14	.500
6	Angel Pagan	Mets	25	.480
7	Ben Zobrist	Rays	15	.467
8	Kevin Fransden	Angels	11	.455
9	Sean Rodriguez	Rays	16	.438
10	Cesar Izturis	Orioles	17	.412

Rank	Name	Team	Fair Bunts	Out%
1	Emilio Bonifacio	Marlins	14	.786
2	Koyie Hill	Cubs	10	.600
3	Rafael Furcal	Dodgers	11	.545
4	Reggie Willits	Angels	13	.538
5	Trevor Crowe	Indians	13	.538
6	Roger Bernadina	Nationals	17	.529
7	Juan Pierre	White Sox	55	.527
8	Michael Saunders	Mariners	14	.500
9	Drew Stubbs	Reds	14	.500
10	Orlando Hudson	Twins	10	.500

Rank	Name	Team	Fair Bunts	Sac%
1	Darnell McDonald	Red Sox	13	.923
2	Brett Myers	Astros	12	.917
3	Clayton Kershaw	Dodgers	20	.900
4	Barry Zito	Giants	16	.875
5	Roy Oswalt	Astros/Phillies	13	.846
6	Ryan Dempster	Cubs	19	.842
7	Bud Norris	Astros	12	.833
8	Chris Carpenter	Cardinals	12	.833
9	Chris Volstad	Marlins	11	.818
t-10	Mat Latos	Padres	11	.818
t-10	Wandy Rodriguez	Astros	11	.818
t-10	Livan Hernandez	Nationals	11	.818

The sacrifice column is interesting because it is composed entirely of pitchers except for the leader, Red Sox outfielder Darnell McDonald.
The last thing I'd like to look at in this post is a way to tie in all of the facets of bunt attempts into one metric.  Using run values is typically the best way to do this.  For bunts in play, I'm using the following weights (with "0" representing a neutral outcome):

Bunt Double Play - -0.78

Bunt Out - -0.28

Sac Bunt - -0.03

Bunt Single - +0.50

Bunt Double - +0.83 (there was only one bunt double last year, courtesy of Cliff Pennington)

In the overall value, I'll also include failed bunt attempts.  The run values for these pitches are dependent on the count and should be similar to the ones shown here.

There will be two sets of leaders and trailers for this metric, which for now I'll refer to as bunting runs - there's bunting runs as a counting stat, and there's bunting runs per 100 attempts.  I don't really like using 100 because it doesn't really have much meaning when it comes to bunting, but it's a nice, round number and is commonly used for rate stats.  According to my numbers, the league average bunt runs/100 in 2010 was -3.46 (-2.95 for bunts not in play and -0.51 for bunts in play), which would mean that overall, attempting to bunt leads to a below-average outcome.
 The top table shows bunting runs, and the bottom table shows bunting runs / 100 (minimum 20 attempts for both).  Both lists include pretty much the same players, but I've included both metrics anyway.

Rank	Name	Team	Bunt Runs
1	Gregor Blanco	Braves/Royals	3.27
2	Angel Pagan	Mets	2.76
3	Ben Zobrist	Rays	2.26
4	Adam Jones	Orioles	2.00
5	Elvis Andrus	Rangers	1.99
6	Jose Reyes	Mets	1.93
7	Cesar Izturis	Orioles	1.59
8	Julio Borbon	Rangers	1.56
9	Ichiro Suzuki	Mariners	1.55
10	Cliff Pennington	Athletics	1.19
1x	Juan Pierre	White Sox	-6.27
2x	Nyjer Morgan	Nationals	-3.92
3x	Chone Figgins	Mariners	-3.79
4x	Joe Blanton	Phillies	-3.48
5x	Denard Span	Twins	-3.06
6x	Emilio Bonifacio	Marlins	-3.04
7x	Livan Hernandez	Nationals	-2.89
8x	Mike Pelfrey	Mets	-2.81
9x	Derek Lowe	Braves	-2.56
10x	Orlando Hudson	Twins	-2.47

Rank	Name	Team	Bunt Runs / 100
1	Gregor Blanco	Braves/Royals	9.35
2	Adam Jones	Orioles	8.35
3	Ben Zobrist	Rays	7.52
4	Angel Pagan	Mets	5.75
5	Ichiro Suzuki	Mariners	5.73
6	Jose Reyes	Mets	4.71
7	Cesar Izturis	Orioles	4.55
8	Cameron Maybin	Marlins	3.66
9	Elvis Andrus	Rangers	3.56
10	Alexi Casilla	Twins	3.39
1x	Joe Blanton	Phillies	-15.82
2x	Mike Pelfrey	Mets	-12.79
3x	Zach Duke	Pirates	-11.54
4x	Derek Lowe	Braves	-11.13
5x	Livan Hernandez	Nationals	-9.97
6x	Trevor Crowe	Indians	-9.87
7x	Hiroki Kuroda	Dodgers	-9.40
8x	Orlando Hudson	Twins	-9.13
9x	Roy Halladay	Phillies	-8.99
10x	Emilio Bonifacio	Marlins	-8.94

I think it's fair to say that Gregor Blanco was the majors' best bunter in 2010.  As notable is Juan Pierre's number of bunting runs, which shows that lots of mediocre bunting might not be a good idea.

Hopefully, this post provided some answers about bunting; in addition, it certainly raises some more questions.  Next week, I will expand to data from 2008 and 2009 in order to look at larger sample sizes and year-to-year correlations.